INVESTIGATION work is due to start on land across Redcar and Cleveland which has an kind of industrial past.

The routine site investigation works could take several years to complete checks on all the sites that have been identified.

The process will start at two former landfill sites, the one off Hob Hill Lane, Saltburn is the first to be investigated, followed by the former Dunsdale Landfill, off Wilton Lane.

Redcar and Cleveland Council has successfully funded the works on the two sites through Defra grants, totalling £188,000, which will include taking soil samples and adding gas monitoring boreholes.

The Council's cabinet member for community protection, Councillor Dave McLuckie, said: "We have got a duty to look at every single piece of land throughout the Borough which has been a former industrial site.

"We must reassure residents this does not mean the land is contaminated, it just means we need to find out a bit more about the actual condition of the land."

The Council's Environmental Protection Team has sent information packs to brief residents likely to be most affected by the investigation works and have written to those residents living in close proximity to the sites explaining the work is a statutory duty for the Council on behalf of the Government.

The ground investigation team will be on site for three weeks then surveyors will return to monitor the gas boreholes. The results should be available later this year.

The Dunsdale and Saltburn closed landfills are the first of 1,475 sites with an industrial past to be investigated.

Coun McLuckie added: "This is very standard, routine work that all local authorities have to do. The work could take years, of course. And it doesn't mean we're going to have on-site investigations every time, some of these will be desktop studies where no further work is needed."

Parsons Brinckerhoff have been appointed as consultant to conduct the current investigations, with the help of external contractors.